Education and Schools

Long gone are the days when small infractions of the student code required writing something on the board 100 times. But, even if those days were still here, you would probably see more minority students and students with disabilities being subject to punishment. Unfortunately, these children are now being excluded from school at alarming rates:

Nearly 1 in 4 Black students were suspended during the 2009-2010 school year.

Nearly 1 in 5 students with disabilities were suspended during the 2009-2010 school year.

For white students and students without disabilities that figure is 1 in 14. The Center for Civil Rights Remedies (an initiative of the UCLA Civil Rights Project) revealed these shocking statistics in a recent study, Out of School and Off Track: The Overuse of Suspensions in American Middle and High Schools, that analyzed the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection. The Center also released a summary of sixteen new research studies that describe the “school discipline gap, contributing factors, and the benefits of reducing disparities for students.” Read more »

A number of state Senators and Representatives in Tennessee have identified a serious problem – Tennessean children aren’t doing that well in school. And they’re right. Tennessee earned a C+ this year on Education Week’s State Report Card and Tennessee’s average ACT score ranks 48th out of 51.

Unfortunately, their solution is simply absurd. There is a bill [PDF] that has cleared committee in both the Tennessee House and Senate that would “fix” the perennial underperformance of students by linking a student’s academic performance to his/her family’s government supports. Specifically it would cut a family’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits by 30 percent if their children “are not making satisfactory progress in school.”

WHAT?! (Let’s keep in mind that in TN, TANF benefits max out at $185/month, we aren’t talking about anyone living large off of a government program.)

I couldn’t neatly package all of my rage into nicely organized paragraphs, so here are the top three reasons why this idea makes me think my head is going to explode…

1. The bill claims the cut to benefits wouldn’t apply if the student has a learning disability. Newsflash – not every child that has a learning disability has been properly screened and diagnosed. When I was a teacher in a low-income school, I taught students that had “highly likely to be dyslexic” results on their preliminary screenings. But in order to be officially classified as dyslexic they had to take a specific exam administered by a diagnostician.  Those exams cost thousands of dollars so none of my students could be properly diagnosed, therefore they couldn’t receive any special services, and they didn’t make adequate progress over the year. The families of those kiddos, if they lived in TN under this law, would have lost vital TANF dollars that helped them barely scrape by.

Once upon a time (last year), I taught 4th grade at a Title I school in rural Louisiana.  We went to school Tuesday through Friday.  Yes, that’s right – only 4 DAYS A WEEK. In 2006 the underfunded and low performing school district desperately needed to find a way to save money, so the school board had to cut out Mondays.

Last week Paul Ryan released his budget and guess what - in FY13 it CUTS $15.8 million in funding from Title I schools (schools where over 75% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch) in Louisiana alone!  In FY14 it adds a whopping $54.9 million in additional cuts to Louisiana schools.  By the end of 2014, under Ryan’s plan, over 4 million of the most vulnerable children across the country would lose access to education services. 

According to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan this is the “The Path to Prosperity.”  Is that a joke?  Read more »

On Wednesday night, the President’s new Early Learning Initiative got a moment in the spotlight on the Daily Show. Host Jon Stewart, in that way only he knows how, highlighted the importance of investing in children’s early years. My trying to recap the clip will certainly erase all the humor, so I’ll let you watch it for yourself.

Think of life like a marathon (just go with me on this metaphor). Many of America’s most vulnerable children are starting five miles behind everyone else - yet we expect them to finish on par with their peers. Expanding the access these children have to high quality early learning opportunities will be revolutionary. Read more »

Since it came out a few years ago, I’ve been fascinated by the website Microaggressions. The website attempts to create a dialogue around the way small interactions about race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, or other characteristics can have enormous impact on an individual’s lived experience. According to the website, “microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, they communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative…slights.” The website is filled with stories of comments and experiences that make submitters feel “erased,” “ignored” or like they don’t matter.

While many of these incidents may seem minor in isolation, put together – and depending on the surrounding circumstances – they can rise to the level of bullying or harassment. This is a particular problem in schools. I certainly remember how, in middle school and high school, a small comment about my hair being frizzy or me not wearing makeup could throw off my entire day. When such comments or other conduct is severe or pervasive, it can create a hostile environment, in which the victim cannot focus on or succeed in his or her schoolwork. In educational settings, harassment is more than a hurtful inconvenience – it’s a barrier to an effective and fair learning environment. Read more »

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On February 19, 2013, the Equity and Excellence Commission, a federal advisory committee, released a report detailing the inequity in the American K-12 educational system and asking the Department of Education to take action. The Equity and Excellence Commission is made up of thought leaders in education such as Russlynn Ali, Michael Rebell, and Randi Weingarten, among many distinguished others. The Commission was responsible for advising the Secretary of Education on the disparities in educational opportunities that give rise to the achievement gap.

And provide advice, they did. The Commission did not pull any punches in its report, For Each and Every Child: A Strategy for Education Equity and Excellence. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human ights lauded the release of the report, stating that “this report confirms what those of us in the civil and human rights community have long known: that our nation’s system of financing and delivering public education is badly broken and in need of a dramatic overhaul.” Read more »

7-year-old Zora Ball (Photo courtesy Harambee Institute.)

This past week, at age seven, first grader Zora Ball became the youngest person to create a mobile application video game. First off, talk about impressive – when I was seven, a successful day included dancing to the Spice Girls on my bed in my pajamas and Dunkaroos in my lunchbox (preferably chocolate). Go Zora!

More importantly, however, let’s use Zora as proof of something really important: that girls can love math and science and be passionate about it, and that programs to show girls that Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) can be fun and interesting are vital.

Ball is a first-grader at Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School in Philadelphia, PA. She (and the other students in the STEMnasium learning academy) attend class every Saturday and love it – they even come voluntarily on weekends! The program is even currently teaching students Mandarin Chinese – with the idea that students will complete transactions in Philly’s Chinatown. IN MANDARIN CHINESE.

Zora is proof that when little girls are turned on to STEM, they get into it. Take the toy Roominate – it’s a buildable toy house that kids design and wire themselves. Read more »

Whenever I open up Google and there’s a new Google Doodle waiting for me, I’m always a little excited – clicking on it always takes me to a short little game to play, or a fun animation, or information on an awesome historical figure I’ve never even heard of.

And this week was no exception – Wednesday brought me this adorable Doodle, honoring Mary Leakey:

Mary Leakey was a British archaeologist and anthropologist who discovered the first fossilized skull of Proconsul, an extinct ape now believed to be an ancestor to humans, among a number of other really cool things.

As a kid, Leakey had an adventurous spirit. Her interest in archeology was sparked at a young age, when her family visited Les Eyzies where another archeologist was excavating a cave. When her family moved to France, she found a mentor in Abbe Lemozi, the village priest, who toured caves with Mary to view prehistoric paintings. Read more »

National Girls and Women’s Sports Day is a day to celebrate all the successes that girls and women have had so far, but it’s also a day to think about the obstacles we face. One of those is the lack of data surrounding girls in high school athletics – so I sat down with our own Title IX expert, Neena Chaudry, and our data whiz, Kate Gallagher Robbins, to get a better understanding about what we’­­­­­re missing.

Becka: When I e-mailed Kate to talk about sitting together to chat, she joked, “I could do the interview right now – in short, we need more data!” What is the number one aspect you each wish you had more data on?

Neena: I have a list! But the number one thing I wish we had was data for each individual school. Only some schools have data available from the U.S. Department of Education, but many don’t. I’d love to get participation rates broken down by sub= groups – particularly to see the numbers of girls of color on high school teams.

Kate: I would really love to dive even deeper and get some individual-level data. The school has the numbers – how many girls who are playing sports are also taking AP Classes, et cetera. More detail would help us determine some interesting correlations and where the gaps are.

Neena: Could we get that? Aren’t there privacy concerns?

Kate: There’s a way to do it while respecting privacy – it would be a different data set. Information about the individual, but without any specifics – for example, Becka would be student number 379 in this region of the country, and I would know that she played lacrosse and took AP Literature, but if I met Becka, I would have no idea she was student number 379.

Becka: Gotcha – so a deep level of anonymous detail.

Hats off to Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, who announced an impressive plan to invest in strengthening the state’s education system, including not only the K-12 and higher education systems, but early education as well. The Governor recommends that $350 million be targeted over four years to expand and improve the state’s early education and care system. This investment would eliminate the state’s waiting list of nearly 30,000 children who need but cannot currently access child care assistance, expand the state’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) to help early educators and providers offer higher-quality experiences to children and families, increase educational programs and supports for parents and family members, and strengthen efforts to provide comprehensive support to children and families. In addition, new school finance funding would be used to incentivize school districts to offer prekindergarten for four-year-olds.

In order to raise the revenue necessary to support these fundamental education initiatives, Governor Patrick, in his state of the state address, proposed to increase the state income tax by one percent, to 6.25 percent. He also proposed to double personal exemptions and eliminate certain itemized deductions in an attempt to distribute the burden of the tax increase based on ability to pay.        Read more »